


How the Fire Princess Stole Christmas

by eucacrypto



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, How the Grinch Stole Christmas! - Dr. Seuss
Genre: F/F, I Will Go Down With This Ship, LIONS ROAR EAGLES SOAR FIZZ PHEASANTS DESERVE MORE, Lesbian Azula (Avatar), Lesbian Katara (Avatar), M/M, Pheasant Army, azutara has invaded my life, i wish i could say no beta read but my mom read it lol, mount crumpit is now mount caldera, pheasants are birbs btw, the zukka is pretty background so, who needs kataang anyway lol
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 09:16:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28757952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eucacrypto/pseuds/eucacrypto
Summary: An Azutara Grinch AU (with changes). Starring Katara as Cindy Lou, Azula as The Grinch, and Ba Sing Se as the town of Whoville.
Relationships: Azula/Katara (Avatar), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 40





	1. chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was having a bit of trouble at first, because katara isn't a naive six year old like cindy lou in the grinch, but i figured out some stuff to make it better. updates will probably be short, and ill update on sunday or monday because that's when i have time. i hope you enjoy!

Inside a snowflake, like the one on your sleeve, there happened a story you must see to believe. Way up in the mountains, in the high range of Earth Kingdom lay the small town of Ba   
Sing Se: The home of the humans.  
Ask any human, And they'll have this to say: "There is no place like Ba Sing Se around Christmas Day."  
Every window was flocked, every lamppost was dressed and the Ba Sing Se band marched in their Christmasy best.  
Arbor Day was fine, and Easter was pleasant and every Saint Fizzin's day, they ate a Fizz pheasant.  
But everyone knew, from their ten toes to their snout, they loved Christmas the most, without a single earthly doubt.

“Katara! Hurry up! We can’t spend all day looking for presents!” Sokka shouted, shoving past several people on his way to find his sister.

“Says the guy who spent an hour picking out a book for Zuko.” she retorted, rummaging through a stack of board games. Sokka crossed his arms and said nothing. 

“Do you remember Christmas at the South Pole?” Katara asked abruptly. Sokka nodded, confused. “There was so much… spirit. Here it just seems like all anyone cares about is presents.” She hummed a little before returning to the pile of boxes. In the background, the cashier was hollering at the ever-growing crowd in his best customer service voice. 

The siblings walked out of the store, each carrying a sizable stack of gifts. The bell gave a loud dong! and someone shouted, “One minute closer to Christmas!” 

The crowd paused in awe before erupting into motion once again. Somebody shouted something about Christmas cabbages, but it was lost in the chaos of the pre-Christmas preparations.

Yes, every bender and non-bender down in Ba Sing Se liked Christmas a lot. But the Grinch, who lived just north of Ba Sing Se… did not.

...

“Come on, Suki! All the best rocks are at the top!” Toph shouted, using Earthbending to propel herself upwards. The non-bender following her did her best to keep up, leaping from rock to rock in an impressive display of strength. The duo was climbing up Mount Caldera to access the pure granite found at the top, which Toph would use to make Christmas presents. Suki had her concerns about being so close to the Grinch’s place of dwelling, but she went along with it. 

Suddenly, she found herself standing in front of a looming metal entryway. Toph went to stand beside her. 

“Crap. Well, I guess we found the Grinch,” she said, taking a purposeful step towards the door. Suki reached out to stop her, but the blind girl just turned around, chanting, “You’re scared of the Grinch! You’re scared of the Grinch!” 

Suki scowled and stepped forward. “Am not, and I’ll prove it.” Toph leaned back with a smug look on her face as Suki walked up to the foreboding door.

Just before she could touch it, it swung open violently and a massive dragon head sprung out, roaring blue flames from its gaping maw. 

Suki was flung backwards into Toph by the door, and the two of them went flying, crashing into the snow and tumbling the rest of the way down. When they reached the bottom, they were snow-covered messes, breathing heavily and untangling themselves from each other.

The Grinch watched this all transpire with a smug look on her face, petting her fake dragon head with a sinister grin. Her eel hound trotted out to stand next to her.

“So they want to get to know me, do they?” She smirked. “Want to spend a little quality time with the Grinch? Well. I can be a lot of fun once you get to know me.” The eel hound whined in fear as she stood. “Maybe it’s time to pay little ZuZu and his friends a visit.”

...

The trash chute down the mountain was far too dirty for the Grinch’s tastes, so she flew down on a Fizz pheasant. She disembarked gracefully, leaving the eel hound to jump off on its own. Cloak pulled up over her head, she surveyed the town, striding through the streets and insulting people who stepped in her way. 

“Oh, my. Would you look at that. That vehicle has been vandalized,” she drawled, dragging a red-painted talon along a car, scraping off the paint as she walked by. 

The Grinch hated Christmas. The whole Christmas season.

A man on the side of the road was advertising Christmas cabbages, and his voice was grating to her ears. She shoved his cart over as she passed. “Oopsies.”

Now, please, don't ask why. No one quite knows the reason.

She tore the mistletoe from the window of a store and tossed it at a group of people on the sidewalk, grinning like a shark. The eel hound wagged its tail, following her dutifully.

It could be that her head wasn't screwed on just right, or it could be, perhaps, that her shoes were too tight.  
But I think that the most likely reason of all, may have been that her heart was two sizes too small.  
…

Toph and Suki barreled through the streets, shivering and shaking snow off of themselves. Suki was the first to spot Sokka and Katara, and made a beeline for the two of them. 

“Suki! Toph! What happened to you guys?” Katara asked, motherly instincts kicking in as she brushed the snow off of them. She had never seen the fearless Earthbender afraid before, and neither had Sokka. 

“It was- the- the Grinch!” Toph managed to choke out. Katara and Sokka gasped. Long Feng appeared beside them, seemingly out of nowhere. 

“Did someone say… Grinch?” he asked, narrowing his eyes and saying the word like it disgusted him. Sokka cowered. “May I remind you that this year marks the one thousandth anniversary of the Ba Sing Se Christmas festival? So good sir, please tell me that these wayward… girls… were not up on Mount Caldera provoking the one person within a thousand miles who hates Christmas?”

Suki, fear replaced with anger at the blatant disregard for her authority and competence, glared as Sokka choked out a “No, sir.”. She stepped forward and sent Long Feng a death stare, but was held back by Katara’s calming hand on her arm. She settled for shooting daggers at him with her eyes as he reassured the crowd that there was no Grinch.

The Grinch smirked. Crisis averted. They would never know what had hit them.


	2. azula exists and katara is confused

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> azula is accidentally the good guy???

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i. am confused. why.

A bright red car took off from the street, swerving and screeching as several angry people chased after it. Katara began to chase after the car as well, but was immediately lost in the crowd of people. The stolen car began to speed away…

...but then azure flames erupted out of the ground, flipping the car over and sending sparks flying everywhere. A man scrambled out of the car and started running away as the crowd shouted in terror and awe.

Katara gaped. Blue fire? She had only ever heard of blue flames once before… in Toph’s description of their encounter with the Grinch. 

A stranger with a hood over her head and an eel hound by her feet turned to leave, and Katara caught a glimpse of her face: perfectly neat dark hair and amber eyes. She was stunned: Zuko had the same eyes…

She remembered Zuko mentioning a sister, once, one day in the Jasmine Dragon. Iroh had gone silent and turned away, and Zuko had said nothing more about her. 

And then a crazy thought started to sprout: What if the Grinch wasn’t so bad after all? What if she was just misunderstood? 

She shook her head, brushing unwanted thoughts away. The Grinch had scared Toph and Suki, and that wasn’t okay. But the idea stayed there, rattling around in the back of her skull.

… 

The Grinch had no idea why the idiotic townspeople were cheering, nor did she want to find out. It was confusing her, and she disliked being confused. She had just seriously damaged a car, something which they would not applaud her for under normal circumstances, and yet they were acting as if she was a hero. 

She turned briskly away, stalking angrily to the edge of the town. She took comfort-- no, not comfort. Comfort is for the weak-- in the fact that the car had been badly damaged. It would take many repairs, and a new paint job, for it to be serviceable again. 

But the peasant girl had seen her face. 

Oh, well. At least she would know to cower in fear the next time they met.

The Grinch left town with a glare and a swoosh of her cloak, running over the day’s events angrily. She had made no mistake, she had done all the things that would be considered evil, but there was something that had gone wrong, and she couldn’t figure out what. They had cheered when she had vandalized and damaged property. 

She landed on her doorstep in a slightly better mood, although she was still far from cheery. Using firebending to fly up and down the mountain was tiring, and it was well past dinnertime.

Katara, Sokka, Toph, and Suki, meanwhile, had also arrived at their house. Aang greeted them cheerfully, stringing lights on the roof with vindication. He waved, almost falling off the roof in the process, and airbended himself down to unlock the door, as Suki had lost her keys. 

The five of them entered the house, where Zuko sat at the table sipping tea. He looked up to greet them, and returned to reading.

…

Katara’s curiosity was piqued. She’d mulled over the mystery of the Grinch all night, and desperately needed to know everything about her. She decided to ask Zuko and Iroh if they knew anything about her, and headed towards Zuko’s room with a video camera in hand and purpose in mind. 

She knocked several times before receiving a response, and when she entered the room, Zuko was seated on a beanbag chair looking at her expectantly. He offered her a cup of tea, which she gratefully accepted.

“What do you know about the Grinch?” she asked, pressing the record button on the camera. Zuko visibly stiffened, eyes darting to the side for a second.

“Why do you need to know?” he retorted, folding his arms. Katara sighed.

“Because I think I saw her. She had the same eyes as you, and she used blue fire.” she said, noticing his surprised reaction. He looked her dead in the eyes. 

“She is my sister.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!!! :D <3  
> updates are posted on sundays or mondays depending on if i have time :)


	3. curiosity killed the cat :/

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Iroh tells Azula's story and Katara decides to go to her lair, which works out about as well as one would expect

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GET OFF MY LAWN KATARAAAAA

The Jasmine Dragon was bustling with life and cheer when Katara walked in, jingling the doorbell and pushing past several people on her way to the back room. Her mind was still buzzing with excitement after learning who the Grinch was, but Zuko had refused to give her more answers, so she had decided to ask Iroh instead. 

Katara opened the door to the back room and walked in, greeting Iroh with a wave. She took out the video camera and asked him the same thing she’d asked Zuko.

They sat down at a table, and he hummed. “I’m assuming you already know who she is?” Katara nodded.

“Well, she is my niece and Zuko’s sister, of course, but that’s not why you’re here. Hmmm.

“She has lived on the mountain since she was eleven years old, since when my nephew moved in with me. Of course, you already know what their home lives were like, but she had it… differently than Zuko did. She was their father’s favorite, a prodigy firebender, and she was just as cruel as he was. 

“Her father set insane expectations for her. She had to master lightning bending as soon as possible, had to put the most effort into everything she did, all because of the promise of love. She excelled at everything, of course. But she became cold and detached, showing no emotion at all, and trained herself never to show vulnerability. 

“However, her mother always favored Zuko, and she was upset about that. She had been taught that love meant pride at her accomplishments, but her mother never even noticed when she mastered a new firebending form. She grew even more bitter, and when they both died, she went mad, and ran away to Mount Caldera. 

“I don’t know for sure, but I think that the reason she hates Christmas is because it’s a time for family, and yet her mother didn’t even give her the time of day.” he finished. Katara nodded, listening intently. 

“What’s her name?” she asked, curious. He shook his head and stood up, smiling warmly before reentering the kitchen. Katara sighed and left the shop, determined to get the answer.

And maybe get the Grinch to come down and socialize as well.

...

Katara reached the top of the mountain just before noon, and entered the Grinch’s cave warily. The blue torches on the wall cast an eerie glow over the vast cavern, and the furniture that adorned the room was scarce and impersonal. It was like the guest bedroom in a house: just the bare essentials, with nothing that would indicate the personality or the preferred pastime of the person living there. 

A burst of blue fire was suddenly released from the room adjacent to the one Katara stood in, although not in her direction. Well, that justified her theory about the stranger with the orange eyes. She carefully tiptoed closer to the archway, feeling a rush of frigid air as she looked out onto the spacious balcony.

The sight that awaited her took her breath away.

The Grinch had her hair in a neat topknot, and was wearing a sleeveless top with puffy pants and pointed shoes. Her movements were graceful and quick, each one accompanied by a stream of blue flame, her face furrowed in concentration. Katara’s hand drifted down to her water pouch, awed but still wary. She watched as the girl, who looked about her age now that she thought about it, finished her form with a sweeping kick and an arch of fire, sending another wave of heat towards Katara.

Katara could pinpoint the second when the Grinch noticed her, a flash of surprise appearing on her face for just a millisecond before being smoothed over. The girl turned towards her, a small blue flame flickering menacingly from the palm of her hand. Katara tried not to be intimidated, failed, and focused instead on not showing it.

The Grinch stalked over, watching Katara intently. She narrowed her eyes, inviting Katara to speak.

“Um, hi.” Katara said, fidgeting nervously. The Grinch’s eyes drifted to her water pouch and back, widening for a single instant with recognition before returning to a neutrally menacing state. 

“Give me four reasons why I shouldn’t kill you where you stand,” she said, the words sending a shiver down Katara’s spine. 

Katara was only partially through stammering a half-formed response when the Grinch grinned sinisterly and turned away, beckoning to her as she walked away. She followed reluctantly as they traveled through the caverns, unsure of where she was being led. Finally, they arrived at a large room with a wooden settee on either side of a table. The Grinch sat on one, motioning to the other with a hint of annoyance at Katara’s hesitance to do the same. 

She sat carefully, looking around the room politely. The Grinch crossed her arms, waiting rather impatiently for her to speak. Katara cleared her throat and fiddled with her water pouch.

...GRINCH’S POINT OF VIEW...

The Grinch was barely out of breath by the time she had finished her firebending form, but the girl at the door took her breath away. She immediately fixed her expression, devoting her thoughts entirely to anger at her home being invaded. The girl in blue looked properly chastised, and the Grinch noticed a pouch of water hanging at her side. A waterbender, then. 

“Um, hi,” the waterbender said, and the Grinch almost laughed at the girl’s obvious nervousness… until she realized that it was the same girl who had seen her on the street. She narrowed her eyes and made sure to be extra threatening, in case the waterbender had noticed her amusement or surprise. When the girl began to stammer, she turned away and beckoned for her to follow. 

She sat down, the girl following suit. The waterbender cleared her throat and began to speak, catching her completely off guard.

“I’m here to talk to you. I don’t want to fight you, although I have half a mind to do so for throwing my friends off a mountain. Why did you stop that car theft?”

The statement was so blunt and determined that the Grinch couldn’t help but laugh. Although, one statement stuck in her mind: stop a car theft? Really? The honesty in the girl’s blue eyes was evident, and the Grinch almost believed her. But she had done no such thing. Unless…

The townspeople had cheered for her. 

Suddenly, she understood. She had messed up, bigtime, and this girl thought she had done it on purpose. She almost laughed, again, barely refraining from running a hand through her hair in frustration. The girl tilted her head, watching her reaction. The Grinch sent an extra-strong glare in her direction, secretly debating how to answer her. She settled for a deliberately condescending laugh, enjoying the way the waterbender’s eyes narrowed. 

The girl scoffed and stood up, turning towards the door, rather boldly in the Grinch’s opinion. She looked back, pursing her lips.

“You know, there’s a festival happening in the city tomorrow. If you came, maybe people would stop hating you.” she said, and then sighed. “Zuko misses you, you know.”

The name hit the Grinch like a boulder. She hadn’t seen her brother in so long, and somehow this girl had managed to get to know him. She stood up without even thinking, and grabbed the girl’s arm, allowing some emotion to seep through her eyes.

“What’s your name?” she asked. The girl’s eyes widened, and she sent her a smile.

“I’m Katara.” And then the waterbender was gone, leaving the Grinch to think.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tysm for reading!! pls leave comments :3


	4. sorry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i promise ill upload as soon as i can!!

Hi everyone, I'm super sorry I didn't upload this week. Over the weekend i was really busy and couldn't find any time to write :(   
I'll write an extra long chapter next week to make up for it!! Thank you guys so much for understanding ^v^   
<3, euca


	5. canceling this

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm really sorry

Hi everybody! my parents decided to ban me from this site until I'm older, so I'm going to stop posting this work. Once I'm allowed to access AO3 again, I'll post the next few chapters. I'm really sorry.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first work on AO3 and will be posted in chapters so feel free to leave suggestions in the comments! Tysm for reading! have a nice day!!! btw the narration is from the official grinch script


End file.
